Hikmat Darmawan

Hikmat Darmawan (Bandung, West Java, May 22, 1970) has been active in many cultural communities since 2000, co-founding the Musyawarah Burung community to accommodate a common passion for cultural and art activities. From virtual discussions, the Musyawarah Burung community developed concrete projects such as piano recitals, poetry readings and cultural orations. He also co-founded Akademi Samali in 2005. It is a comic community dedicated to exploring possibilities for Indonesian comic artistic and industrial development.

Aside from this, Hikmat actively engages in public discussions. He has given workshops on nonfiction writings, journalism and between 2003-2004 gave a series of special comic workshops on conflict resolution in Poso (Sulawesi), Jakarta and Madura, a program supported by Common Ground Indonesia.

In 2006-2007, he was program manager for MP Book Point, a bookstore in Jakarta catering to a wide range of interests. There, he developed partnerships to hold public activities on literature, movies, comics, social movements and art. In 2007 he cofounded www.rumahfilm.org, a platform for Indonesian movie critics to explore Indonesian cinema within its socio-cultural context.

He returned to print media as editor of Madina Magazine in 2008-2009 and in 2010 was selected for the Asian Public Intellectuals Fellowship Program from the Nippon Foundation. During this period, he conducted research in Japan and Thailand about the globalization of manga subculture. Since 2012, he has resumed activities with Akademi Samali and ID Kreatif, besides acting as consultant on comics, books and film programs for the Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy.

His current project Pabrikultur (pabrikultur.com) is a brand journalism provider, which also offers programming of cultural events. His latest book is Komik Gebrak! Esai-Esai Komik: Narasi dan Eksistensi (2015).